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"Virtuoso Piano Series: This series continues Saturday at Town Hall, with a performance by pianist Tien Hsieh, whose recital extends from Bach and Beethoven to Schumann and Liszt. Her live recording (including some of these works) demonstrates her commanding technique and an orchestral-like sonority at the piano."
- Seattle Times
Melinda Bargreen
November 15, 2007
"Tien Hsieh delivered electrifying performances of music of monumentally heroic difficulty. Works by Messiaen, Beethoven and finally Liszt's Rhapsodie Espagnole were breathtaking in their technical quality and interpretive maturity."
- The Carmel Pine Cone
(Carmel, California)
"Serious, composed, tiny and full of music, Tien Hsieh lets her artistry on the piano express a warmth and freshness of ideas that surely none but a poet could explain."
- Pacifica Tribune
(Pacifica, California)
"Youthful classical pianist Tien Hsieh dazzled an enraptured audience…resulting in a round of standing applause."
- Lake County Record Bee
(Clearlake, California)
"Tien Hsieh took the audience by surprise when she played (Beethoven) Choral Fantasy for Piano and Chorus. It looked as though her entire being was exploding with vigor as sounds seemingly poured from her fingertips."
- Bonner County Daily Bee
(Sandpoint, Idaho)
"Hsieh performed Beethoven's Emperor with the symphony (Redlands Symphony Orchestra)...Like the music, she appeared calm and subdued at times and then feverishly focused on the Bowl's recently rebuilt Steinway during moments of extreme concentration required by the score. Always watching Fetta from the corner of her eye, Hsieh nimbly fingered her way through the difficult adagio un poco mosso, the symphony supplying her fanfare. By the completion of the rondo allegro, she had her head nearly resting on the instrument before her, coaxing its newly restored beauty into the air of the night. Hsieh received an ovation from the audience, who requested several bows of her before she could leave the stage."
- Redlands Daily Facts
(California)
"Hsieh traveled this whirlpool of technical command through chaos into calm
with enlightened insight and scholarly devotion that dazzled (Beethoven,
Op.111). Definitely a student of Olympian deeds, pianist Hsieh traveled her
formidable, thoroughly exciting program, with her wits and her virtuoso flights
into the sublime on the same page. Bravo."
- Pacifica Tribune
(Jean Bartlett, Pacifica, California)
"...By the Adagio movement, even Bach must have been as captivated as Hsieh's audience; here poignancy and delicacy reigned until exploding into an upbeat fugal ending (Bach-Busoni's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major). With Schumann's Symphonic Etudes and Scriabin's Sonata No. 3, Hsieh's speed and power were remarkable, her surety through complex passages to be envied by anyone who sat at a keyboard, her articulation of individual notes precise and clear. And then the encore-the Schumann/Liszt Widmung Dedication- floated from her heart as much as from the piano! With these Tien Hsieh played like Michelangelo who discovered his sculptures within the marble."
-Independent Coast Observer
Iris Lorenz-Fife, Gualala, California
Pianist Tien Hsieh performs in Georgetown
"Taiwan born, Tien Hsieh, enthralled Sunday's audience with piano artistry like they have never heard. her intensive training begun under her mother, progressed to studying at the University of Houston School of Music, and culminating in the taking of her master's degree at Manhattan School of Music. For Sunday's concert, Ms. Hsieh chose works of Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Schumann and four of Liszt. In fact, her ability to interpret Liszt so flawlessly won her accolades when performing in an All-Liszt program at the Liszt Museum in Budapest. Meine Freuden (My Joys) was especially soul stirring.
During Sunday's concert, you could hear a pin drop as attendees hung on every note. Her profound expressiveness and ultimate musicianship was so spellbinding it totally absorbed we listeners.
The writer has heard many musicians give concerts at our IOOG Hall, but this lady has been the most accomplished yet."
- Georgetown Gazette
(Warren Walters, Georgetown, California)
"...By the Adagio movement, even Bach must have been as captivated as
Hsieh's audience; here poignancy and delicacy reigned until exploding into an
upbeat fugal ending (Bach-Busoni's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major). With Schumann's Symphonic Etudes and Scriabin's Sonata No. 3, Hsieh's speed and power were remarkable, her surety through complex passages to be envied by anyone who sat at a keyboard, her articulation of individual notes precise and clear. And then the encore - the Schumann/Liszt Widmung Dedication - floated from her heart as much as from the piano! With these Tien Hsieh played like Michelangelo who discovered his sculptures within the marble."
- Independent Coast Observer
(Iris Lorenz-Fife, Gualala, California)
Excerpts from full reviews:
November 15, 2007
Romanticism Magnified with Pianist Tien Hsieh
"On Saturday, November 10, I attended a recital given by Taiwanese-born pianist Tien Hsieh. Titled Romanricism Magnified, this was the second installment of the Virtuoso Piano Series at Town Hall. Although the hall itself was only about half-full, the audience, a few of whom I managed to interview after the concert, appeared to be very pleased with Ms. Hsieh's performance of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt.
Ms. Hsieh started the program with two pieces, written by Bach and Beethoven, respectively, and later arranged by Romantic composer Franz Liszt. The first was Bach's Organ Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542. I found that Liszt's arrangement of this work was so romanticized that the Fantasy did not sound like Bach at all. It was not until the Fugue that the qualities typical of Baroque music became apparent. Ms. Hsieh played the Fantasy and Fugue with great vigor and passion. Next came Liszt's arrangement of Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved), Op. 98. Ms. Hsieh performed this song cycle really well, so that it was like the piano was, in fact, "singing" the songs.
The last piece of the first half was the Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111, Beethoven's final sonata, written only six years before his death. In my opinion, this was the highlight of the recital, especially the first movement. "It was intense," commented Asli Omur, a senior at the University of Washington, "[Ms. Hsieh was so animated that] her bun turned into a ponytail." Perceptible emotion aside, Ms. Hsieh's feeling and reaction to the music could be sensed in her intonation and powerful crescendos and diminuendos, not to mention her impressive technique. She seemed to digress a bit in the middle of the second movement, but she regained her strength toward the end and finished the Sonata with as much vigor and feeling as she had shown at the beginning.
After a brief intermission, the audience reassembled for Schumann's Humoreske, Op. 20. Schumann himself considered this his most melancholic composition. Ms. Hsieh handled it skillfully, playing with a very broad scope of feeling, moving rapidly from merriment to melancholy and back again.
Ms. Hsieh finished the program with Liszt's Rhapsodie Espagnole. "The Liszt was very exciting," remarked Frank Stackhouse, a local physician and lover of piano music, "[Ms. Hsieh] has a great range of emotion." Ms. Hsieh, acknowledged for her expertise in the interpretation of Liszt, recently performed at the Liszt Museum in Budapest, Hungary. The Rhapsodie Espagnole is one of her signature pieces, and for good reason. Her performance was so refined that she received a very enthusiastic standing ovation. This led to an encore, Schumann's Dedication, which the composer had written for his wife, Clara, and Ms. Hsieh dedicated to her appreciative audience.
John Erling, avid music lover and proprietor of the late Fifth Avenue Record Store summed up the experience: "This girl is one hundred percent talent!" he declared eagerly, "Those fierce octaves...[Ms. Hsieh] tossed them off like nothing. The Schumann and Liszt were a knockout." He added that it was a shame more people did not come to hear her play."
- European Weekly
Review by Elena Goukassian
November 1, 2006
Keeping her wits and her virtuoso flights on the same page, pianist Tien Hsieh dazzles Pacifica
With the clear intention of separating his sound from Beethoven, Johannes
Brahms put his own spin on the piano sonata and wrote "Sonata No. 1 in C Major,
Op. 1 No. 1." Brahms was young, full of exuberance and willing to seize the
moment and lay all his compositional cards on the table. A pianist performing
this piece must begin with dark potent rumblings; soften into trills,
intricate ornamentation and shadow march then leap onto a new page of technical
bravado. Saturday night Pacifica Performances welcomed pianist Tien Hsieh to
their concert hall stage and she opened her program with the aforementioned
ditty. Hsieh's performance of this sizeable Brahms piece was a colossal
interpretation at its most intricate and commanding. Chopin often kept his rhythmic foundation floating like a lily on rainbow colored waters before it plunged over the embankment into a pool of green. With her fingers dancing one elusive thread slower than a waltz, Hsieh next gave us "Four Mazurkas, Op. 33"
(Chopin). Though nothing sounded controlled, everything was under Hsieh's complete control allowing her listeners a piano doorway into a delicate seduction of Polish dance and romantic mystery. Hsieh also took good advantage of the intimacy of the Sanchez Concert Hall to deliver quiet beads of personal poetry - a true tribute to Chopin's gentle performance style.
Pianist composer Franz Liszt was a bigger than life, nineteenth century
showman. But behind each blazing, garland strewn performance was a real
front-page virtuoso in action, able to make the ladies swoon because his music was and
is a triumph of the spirit. Had I lived in his time, I would have been a
front row junkie. Liszt's "Rhapsodie Espagnole" was the final offering of Ms.
Hsieh's first set. With a seamless flow through texture and melody and a pulsing
articulation, Hsieh played all that is loved about Liszt - sweeping madness
and no-holes barred, intoxicating technique. Hsieh gave her audience layers
of Liszt immortal.
When Beethoven sent his final sonata "Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111" to
his publisher, his publisher presumed that the third movement was lost in the
mail. A rumor then spread that Beethoven did not have time to write the third
movement - but all as sent was correct. The first movement "Maestoso.
Allegro con brio e appassionato" rolls and tosses over the measure of the keyboard,
stopping in the serene and circling the divine. The second movement,
"Arietta. Adagio molto, semplice e cantabile" demands trills, ragtime, 18th century
untamed boogie woogie and a release from the storm into the calm. It requires
seemingly in sound alone seven hands; it allows only two. Hsieh traveled
this whirlpool of technical command through chaos into calm with enlightened
insight and scholarly devotion that dazzled. Definitely a student of Olympian
deeds, pianist Hsieh traveled her formidable, thoroughly exciting program, with
her wits and her virtuoso flights into the sublime on the same page. Bravo.
- Pacifica Tribune
(Jean Bartlett, California)
Pianist Tien Hsieh commanding the spirit of Liszt from Sanchez Concert Hall stage
Saturday night, classical pianist Tien Hsieh, sat down to the piano on Pacifica Performance Sanchez Concert Hall stage and offered up the fingerprints of Liszt throughout her entire evening's presentation in that she never floundered from dazzling technique and spellbinding octaves. Her first piece was "Fantasy and Fugue in G minor" (written by Johann Sebastian Bach for organ and arranged for piano by Franz Liszt). Amazingly the sound of grandiose organ roared its sound through Hsieh's flawless liquid piano in a spool of dark, masterful strokes. Subtle shadings and meltaway phrases brought the color of Sergei Rachmaninoff right through Hsieh's hands in her performance of his compositions "Etude-Tableau in A Minor, Op. 39 No.2" and " Etude-Tableau in A Minor, Op. 39 No. 6." Like Rachmaninoff and like Liszt, Hsieh never wasted a single note. Grand, relentless, madness explained, love caught through fingertips and galloping hooves trailing off to pastoral dreams - all these sounds wove through pianist Hsieh's piano exploration of Robert Schumann's " Humoresque, Op.20." A long but glorious piece of music, the story of Schumann lingered long in the ear after his narrative piano had finished.
The second half of Hsieh's program began with "Venezia e Napoli" composed by Liszt in 1840. Can hands fall like autumn leaves on the piano? Can rich and skillful, detailed texturing really explain the song of the gondolier, or speak in lyric from 13th century Italy yet still find breath to whirl and spin in a lively toe heel dance? The answer is yes, when the composer is Liszt and the pianist is Hsieh. Hsieh filled her piano sails with plush melancholy and lovely hues of grain in her presentation of Liszt's transcription of Franz Schubert's "Der Müller und der Bach." Waves of arpeggios calling out to passion serene met and married in Hsieh's version of "Widmung" (Robert Schumann/Franz Liszt.) Hsieh finished with a brilliant interpretation of Franz Liszt "Mephisto Waltz #1."
Throughout her extraordinarily demanding performance venue, Hsieh appeared lit by a fire from within that enabled her to swirl through clusters of fast moving notes then seemingly shimmer through waterfall articulation. She didn't say much throughout her performance. In fact, she didn't speak at all until she introduced her encore piece of music. Serious, composed, tiny and full of music, Tien Hsieh lets her artistry on the piano express a warmth and freshness of ideas that surely none but a poet could explain. Still it might be nice for her to look out onto her audience to see the sweep of smiles she has won."
- Pacifica Tribune
(Jean Bartlett, California)
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